Canada. An Rcaf No. 7 Air Observer School At Portage La Prairie Instructor's Badge, Very Scarce

Canada; Bronze gilt with blue enamels, maker marked "McKENZIE-CLAY WINNIPEG." on the reverse, 50.7 mm (w) x 49.8 mm (h), intact lugs and pin, intact enamels, scattered gilt wear, near extremely fine.

Footnote: Approximately only five to six of these badges are known to exist, making in very scarce. Air Observers were later called "Navigators". For recruits in this stream, the training path after the Initial Training School was eight weeks at an Air Observer School (AOS), one month at a Bombing & Gunnery School, and finally one month at a Navigation School. The Air Observer schools were operated by civilians under contract to the RCAF. For example, No. 7 at Portage la Prairie run by Canadian Pacific Airlines. However, the instructors were RCAF. The basic navigation techniques throughout the war years were dead reckoning and visual pilotage, and the tools were the aeronautical chart, magnetic compass, watch, trip log, pencil, Douglas protractor, and Dalton Navigational Computer. They trained in the Avro Anson. No. 7 Air Observer School was originally opened in July 1942, as No. 14 Elementary Flying Training School on October 28, 1940, a part of the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan. The post-war expansion of the RCAF resulted in RCAF Station Portage la Prairie being re-activated on September 15, 1952. No. 2 Advanced Flying School (No. 2 AFS) was established, to train RCAF and NATO pilots. Several other flight schools followed over the succeeding decades. As a result of the unification, the station was renamed CFB Portage la Prairie in 1966. In the late 1980s, Department of Defence budget reductions lead to the contracting out of flight training to civilian agencies. As a result, CFB Portage la Prairie closed on September 1, 1992. It reopened as Southport Aerospace where 3CFFTS continues to conduct flight training under contract with KF Aero.